Month: August 2006

In high school I used to hang out with this guy Eric a lot. We used to come up with all kinds of words and phrases and we used to quote movies like Fletch and Vacation a lot. You are free to believe this or not, but I (or he, or both.. hard to remember) one day in Junior year (1986) came up with the word “Milf”. If you don’t know what it means, look it up. Yea.. we came up with the word and used it a bunch and eventually it made it to the ears of the scriptwriter who wrote American Pie which then made it a household word. It’s impossible to claim credit for this word anymore now.

But not again! I came up with something I call the B-Scale in college and I use it all the time and I tell people about it and I can see the day when it gets all popular and I’m stuck at parties telling people “yea, I invented that and the word Milf.. no really”. So I’m going to post it here and hope that will be enough to cement my copyright.

The B-Scale is a rating system for womens breasts. It’s supposed to be used like the 10 scale.. so you are supposed to give a quick rating as a girl walks by when you are with your friends (who also are supposed to know the scale as well). It’s important to note that using the scale is not a science, it’s more of an artform. You have to give your B rating out quickly and you have to stick to it.. there is no changing a rating after the fact.

The scale is made up of 3 metrics and each metric can have a number from one to three. The first two metrics are valuations of specific attributes and the third is a catch-all rating (the third value is the most important and telling). So, it’s quite simple actually, the B scale gets its name from the words Big, Bouncy and Beautiful. First you give an indication of the breast size, then an evaluation of the bounciness and lastly a catch-all rating of the total beauty of the breasts. Now, if you spend some time thinking about it, you can have a pair of breasts in all 27 classifications. Here’s some examples :

– A woman walks by with huge and tremendously bouncy breasts.. just way too big and bouncy to deal with. She would get a 3-3-1.

– Another has very large, solid non-moving breasts but they fit her perfectly and are just perfect : 3-1-3

– Small brests, not bouncy but again perfect : 1-1-3

etc… It takes practice but the scale can describe almost anyone. Give it a try!

ps. I also came up with the expression “Give me some Pepper!!” and the word “shrub” in case you hear them…

I saw the cover of the Daily News today and it had a comparison graphic of the two photos of Katie Couric (story here if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and at first I thought “who cares? Report on some real news!” then I thought more and realized that this was a huge story that was actually being underreported.

There are 3 major network news programs and the key to a network news show is to have trust with the audience. Right now the MSM has a serious trust issue and with one of the networks (CBS) getting a new news anchor (Couric) you would think that they would be all over the trust issue from the start.. kind of like “hey.. we know you don’t like us or trust us, but here is a fresh start.. Katie is going to be the anchor you can tune into every night for the honest news”. So you can imagine what a problem it is that they usher her into her new post with an altered photo. In light of all the doctored photos in the news lately, that’s really not a good thing at all.

So, the story is huge. Here is a major network caught lying to you about their own figurehead! Trust, heh.. who needs it? Oh.. the Daily News isn’t doing you much good by kidding around about it either.

In “The Week” magazine they print some short tidbits of info. I ripped out a page with one on it from the week of August 4. It reads as follows:

About 4 million people-half of them children under 5-have died as a result of fighting between Congo’s army and rebel militias since 1998. Every six months, the toll of Congolese who die of malnutrition, disease, or violence equals that of 2004’s deadly Indian Ocean tsunami. – The New York Times

There are 2 facts in that little blip, each of them incredible. First off 4 million people dead in 8 years. That’s 500,000 a year, 10,000 a week, 1,300 a day! That’s insane! Picture a 9/11 death toll every other day for the past 8 years.

The second fact when we add in death due to starvation or disease, the death toll equals that of the tsunami… Every 6 months! So I ask you: where is the universal outpouring of aid from America? Where is the BushClinton team? Why do we not care about this country and most of the contenent it is on?

Sorry for these boring posts, but between my new job and the rest of my life there really isn’t time to keep up with the news and post anything more interesting. But, the hunt for the best HDTV continues. I have literally spent over 2 hours reading this thread in the AVS forum in addition to this review and I think I’ve found my TV, the Sony Bravia 46″. It’s a little smaller than I wanted but it really kicks some butt. Now I just need to find a truck…

I’ve been looking for a HDTV now for a while. The past few weeks I’ve been more serious. I’ve been to a number of stores and you know what? I haven’t seen one store yet that had a range of tv’s that were a) calibrated correctly, b) had good source signals, c) all were displaying the same signal at the same time and d) had a possibility of viewing SD content. How can someone be expected to select a TV that they are going to spend $3-$5000 on and not be able to see it work as intended? The stores so far have proven useless and the research I’ve done online in forums (AVS forum has been the best) just has story after sotry about poor store experiences.

I’m amazed that people have actually been able to make informed decisions about their HDTV purchaces, but actually I’m not. It seems that people jsut buy what they can get a deal on and really don’t look at the quality or even know a good tv from a bad one. Americans really don’t care about quality like they used to it seems…

Saw “Snakes on a Plane” last night. I was totally entertained. I knew this film would be far fetched in the plot department so I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality story and I was actually surprised that it had no major holes. It actually reminded me a bit of the old “Airport 77” disaster films. It was funny and Sam Jackson took his role seriously.

Now, what I didn’t like was the theatre experience. I’ve complained before about this stuff and I will complain again. First off, $12 to see a film is pretty steep when you have studios releasing so many bad films and a reviewing infastructure that is useless. Studios need to address the quality to price issue. I’ll spend $12 for a film that I really want to see, but I won’t spend it on something that looks interesting but I’mnot sure about.

This theatre was remarkably quiet (ironically not what we wanted fot this film). No cellphones when off, nobody was talking, there was no talking back to the film, etc. No, in this case, what made me mad was the fact that while the projection was very good, the sound was miserable. There was no surround at all, there was no dynamic range at all and worst of all, it sounded like there was ony one speaker (set right behind the screen) doing it all.

I know that films come in different formats and I know that theatre PAs are complex, but there needs to be some way to assure viewers that they are going to hear the film the way the director intended. There’s just no excuse.

So, the deal is that I don’t go to films much. And for someone who loves movies, that should tell the studios something. If its the social experience, the theatre experience, or the quality of films themselves, the studios should get thier shit together and soon.

If you own a car, you’ve seen the Check Engine light. In my girlfriends car 2 weeks ago that light came on and I insisted that since she hadn’t been to the dealer in a while we go there to have the light diagnosed and get a 40,000 checkup. $1,500 later we found out the light had lit up becasue the battery was weak. Now a bunch of the money was for the checkup itself but the check engine “diagnosis” cost $170! And that was just to see what the light was on for. What a fucking scam man!

So, the light is back on now and you can already be sure how I feel about it. I am not going back there and spending $170 for them to tell me my wiper fluid is low. What gives? Well, all new cars from 1996 on have these diagnostic computers in them that turn on the light. The feds (doing something useful for a change) mandated that all cars should have the same interface and codes so one can plug in a diagnostic tool to the car to see what’s up. This was called OBD-II.

I found on Amazon an OBD-II reader for $60 that not only tells me the code, but allows me to reset the light. So now we can diagnose the deal ourselves and if it’s bad, we can go have it fixed. The tool reviews are great and I’ll let you know how it works for me when I get it.

I think that I’m going to talk to you a little about my portfolio now. Since about when I started college I started buying and holding on to stocks. I’ve always been interested in the stock market and I’ve always thought of making money using it but I never had the money to do so. So I had to buy in small quantities. I didn’t buy often since at the time, there was no discount brokerages. The first stock I ever got was in high school and it was a gift of one share of Exxon.

The Exxon share was cool since they had this thing called a DRIP. With most dividend producing stocks you can enroll with the company in this plan that allows you to reinvest the dividends in fractional shares of stock (hense the name : Dividend ReInvestment Plan). In addition DRIPs allow you to send them additional money and they will buy you fractional stock with no fees. Thats what I did and I would send them maybe $25 every couple of months and buy myself .6 shares or whatever. I ended up doing the same with Intel stock and for a while I had those two shares. That was the start of my stock trading carreer.

Now I’m all set up with a Scottrade account. They are pretty good. $7 trades, a nice web interface, and no account fees. The only thing I don’t like is that they won’t mail you statements. Instead you download PDFs from online. This is good, but I forget to do it often.

So, over the years I’ve ended up investing about $20,000 and my portfolio has done pretty well with that investment. My investment plan is simple: I buy companies that I think are doing good stuff and are going to for some time in the future. What I mean by ‘good stuff’ is that the company is making money by selling a product that I use or they do a service well. I buy and hold stocks for a very long time. I barely look at stock prices or news on the companies except in one case which I’ll get to.

OK. So here are the stocks I own and the reasons I own them:

Disney : This company owns ESPN and ABC and makes money every damn year.

Comcast : Ok. This one’s interesting. You all know I’m not a fan of their service, but I bought a share so I could get thier Annual Report so I can keep an eye on their ownership of the Flyers and also so I could watch them take over the media world. Thier stock has been a great investment since then and I’ve bought some more. This stock goes against my rules but it keeps making money and Comcast keeps growing. So, what can I do?

General Electric : I’m a solar guy and a renewable energy guy and no huge company is doing more to embrace the new green economy than GE. This company (in my mind) gets it and although they are huge, they seem like a good investment to me.

British Petroleum : I have to own an Oil stock. They just keep making money. But BP is different. I bought them becasue they are investing heavily in alternative energies. More than any other oil company. I’ve also bought into the thought that they are the most concious company in their group. This is a very long term holding for me. My thought is that oil dwindles, this company will be most poised to change over and when oil is gone, they will not only survive, but thrive with their headstart.

Intel : I still own intel and although they are tanking a bit, I can’t see them ever not making money in the long run. They are simply too big a company and have too much market dominance.

Sirius : I’ve saved the best for last. I own a ton (relative to my other stocks) of shares in this company. I can’t stop buying them either. I bought a bunch at $2 about 2 years ago and watched them climb up and up and up leading into the Stern deal and now I see them dropping down again so they are a killer bargain to me. Owning this company in the long term will be like owning shares in HBO or CBS. The reason right now they are not doing well in the market is that XM is doing poorly as a company and the market treats them both as one (even though Sirius is very well managed currently). I watch this stock all the time becasue I am conviced the market has it wrong. We’ll see.

Other : I have a large amount of cash in a hedge fund I bougt a while ago. I’ve made some decient returns from it but now it’s coming time to sell it. I will probably sell it in November and will use the money to balance out my positions in the companies I own and also buy a new stock (Netflix) who I think is poised to become the next Mirimax.

Anyway, now you’ve got some reference when I talk about stocks and the market (which I may, rarely).

This is actually pretty cool to me. CNN on their web video portal will be showing their entire broadcast from 9/11 in real time. I’m a 9/11 junkie and I actually have about 6 hours of coverage on VHS that I recorded from that day sitting in a saftey deposit box. This seems like a great way to go over events as they occured. I’m sure there will be people protesting it though…